Artist Statement - Sopearb Touch

55 Pages·2014·4.11 MB·English

Painting and Stuff, LOL
By

Sopearb C. Touch

A thesis presented to the
Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art
of Washington University in St. Louis
in partial fulfillment of the degree of
Master of Fine Arts

Graduate Committee:
Buzz Spector
Jamie Adams
Jessica Baran
Kelly Shindler
At my opening exhibit a guy asked me what my art was about.
I told him it was about
whatever I wanted to do,
when I wanted to do,
how I wanted to do,
if I wanted to do.
It was the most honest answer I ever gave concerning my work.
He then asked me if I was a rapper.
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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT I
INTRODUCTION: TABULA RASA 2
CHAPTER 1: PAINTING FOR THE PAINTERLY PAINTING PAINTER’S PAINTING SAKE 5
CHAPTER 2: HUMOR 9
CHAPTER 3: THE INTERWEBZ 16
CHAPTER 4: THE CONSUMERIST AGE 24
CHAPTER 5: NARRATIVE FIGURE PAINTING 36
CHAPTER 6: PYRAMIDS OF LIFE 44
CONCLUSION 48
BIBLIOGRAPHY 51
END NOTES 52

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ABSTRACT

Our own human experience is a distinct realm which can never be precisely duplicated in
another lifetime. It frames our whole view of existence and, as artists, affects our art making
process. The theory of the Tabula Rasa functions as the inspiration of my work and this writing
examines my personal view of growing up in the internet age and America, and how my view of
life, as well as artistic practice, is shaped by a consumerist culture that has gone global.
Additionally, as a figurative painter, I create a context with other artists who create work about
their own experience such as Liu Xiaodong, Jan Steen, Kehinde Wiley, Patrick Martinez, and
Roger Shimomura. This paper ties many facets of culture together, along with my personal
reflection, to ultimately examine its effect on my art.

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INTRODUCTION: TABULA RASA

We all start as blank slates (blank minds), and are filled, or inscribed, as we experience
life. No two human experiences are identical. Potential preexists, but our knowledge of anything
is attained through exposure to the world – through ideas, experiences, interactions with material
things and people. So we, as human beings, develop and become both a compound and a mirror
of our experiences. As we continue to live, we emit what we have learned, reacting to the world
around us, which in turn constantly creates more for us to learn and inscribe on our tablet. The
result is a human—a biomechanical organism—capable of perpetuating only what s/he perceives
to understand.
Just as a feral child exists in an animal state, doing what is necessary to survive, a person
who exists in society learns how to function as a citizen. The feral child observes nature and
learns how to navigate the wild—the citizen does the same but has to learn man-made laws and
structures. Both start out as children, learning the limits of the body, and exponentially
increasing their intellect each day through interaction with reality. The feral child explores the
chaotic nature, soaking in information generated through his/her encounters; the citizen does
likewise in the concrete jungle. Erling Eng comments on John Locke’s Tabula Rasa,
Locke uses this figure to introduce his view that all ideas finally derive from experience:
How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and
boundless Fancy of Man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it
all the materials of Reason and Knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, From
Experience. In that, all our Knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives it
self. Our Observation employ'd either about external, sensible Objects, or about the
internal Operations of our Minds, perceived and reflected on by our selves, is that, which
supplies our Understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the
Fountains of Knowledge, from whence all the Ideas we have, or can naturally have, do
spring.1
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In my painting series, Tabula Rasa: The Space Born, I adopt this theory to describe the
life of a space-born figure. I reference my own human experience to create a narrative about the
life of this figure, who resembles a human but is distinctly different by its celestial skin,
suggesting how we are all actually space born beings in the universe, but this figure literally has
starry flesh. In the narrative, I deal with issues from my own life such as religious and societal
conflicts (in Flight of the Prophets), sexual experiences (in The Tempest), and deciphering the
esoteric from exoteric (in Lesson of the Neophyte).
What is human identity? Our name is just a sound, a spelling, used for identification. Our
knowledge is recycled, our actions just rote memorization. We are the embodiment of our
intellect and retained information, which ultimately creates the human existence that we know:
our filled slates.

Sopearb Touch, Flight of the Prophets, 2014
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Sopearb Touch, The Tempest, 2014
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CHAPTER 1: PAINTING FOR THE PAINTERLY PAINTING PAINTER’S
PAINTING SAKE

I think about painting a lot. A really lot. It is the core of my artistic practice to such an
extent that I am engaged in painting even when I’m not painting. I trouble-shoot problems,
arrange colors, build themes; I consider anything that contributes to painting other than actually
painting. In a sense, I paint with my imagination and memory. It is a crucial component of my
practice that appears frivolous until paint is actually laid down.
I also take a lot of notes for painting. I list possible series of works, jot down ideas about
composition, and sketch. Sometimes I create titles of works before the works have been made.
As I work, I am able to reference these notes and ponder certain ideas to transmute into larger
projects. Some days I don’t use anything for reference, and just paint from this urge inside me—
my ether—that won’t be satisfied until some pigment is flung upon a surface. I continue to paint
from life—including plein air landscapes and portraits of models or myself.
Painting has become so habitual to me, I often can’t explain why I paint or the techniques
and subject matter in my work. I paint simply because. I paint because it fills a necessary void.
Painting actually makes me feel as if I’m working and playing at the same time. Making
something “good” isn’t even the point—I paint just to see what stuff looks like and to trouble-
shoot painterly issues. The most important part is that I enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy your work, it
shows—luckily, I always enjoy it. It’s like an impossible arithmetic problem that I don’t try to
solve but just try and refine.
Aleister Crowley, the notorious occultist, coined his infamous phrase; “Do what thou
wilt, love is the law love under will.”2 I paint what I want to. With painting I can create any type
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of environment, theme, or mood. I use figures to represent people I have been exposed to in my
life, whether in fact or in my imagination. I can’t reference a person I’ve never experienced. The
same can be applied to every other aspect of my painting; I can only reference what I know. It’s
like the idea of the Tabula Rasa: I use my tablet of knowledge, my mind, as my resource for
painting. As I reference my personal body of knowledge, I touch on a unique personal
experience that becomes the basis of my paintings.
My painting method is simple: do whatever it takes. En plein air, from imagination,
pictures from the internet—all of these approaches give me a huge resource bank, but I only use
what I feel will capture my idea. After painting, the work sits in a limbo of possible completion
or incompletion―the judgment period. If complete, then it’s deemed either good or bad and
thrown into a pile of other completed paintings; if incomplete, I contemplate what about it needs
finishing—or I just abandon it. The judgment period is the longest part of my process and varies
with each painting.
Being of the internet age and living in the U.S., the great melting pot, heavily influences
my work. The stream of information I’m able to access via the internet allows me to reach
beyond my locale, extending to global sources of information, but it is still limited to what I
search for and what I chose to expose myself to; the limitations of my own experience extend to
my use of the internet. Information on the internet is heavily regulated. So, while the internet
provides substantial data, it is still far from objective truth. My work reflects the information that
is accessible, but also reflects all the misinformation that pours out of media outlets. The result
creates an absurd environment of truth vs. frivolity that the seeker has to discern. While the
internet is a great source for material, we must understand that it isn’t always accurate and that
we must look at who is creating and disseminating this information.
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You Don’t Need Anything and But You Want Everything are two paintings that strongly
capture the essence of my recent body of work. The former is a surreal landscape of various
types of housing, while a dominant Sikh man stands in the foreground and G.I. Joe action figures
rain down on the composition; the latter has an abstract colorful background in front of which a
Lucian Freud model poses on a couch, and Barbie Dolls and blobs of color precipitate. Both
pieces pave the way for my recent paintings, which contain a juxtaposition of imagery and
humor about living in an internet- and consumerist-driven global society. The work portrays
ideal and realistic figures, all seamlessly floating in the same world or dimension. The floating
aspect references the invisible information transmitted around us that we can’t see, but which
constantly dominates our lives through media and the internet; it also reflects our lofty idolatry
of consumerism and corporate culture.

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